


Night Call

by anextraordinarymuse (December_Daughter)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, brief mention of Robin Hood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4098310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/December_Daughter/pseuds/anextraordinarymuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Even when I despised you, I think I wanted you to love me." Emma says it calmly, but Regina knows that these are the words that will destroy the world.<br/>There is no force on heaven or earth that will keep her from the blonde now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is just something that wouldn't get out of my head.

Regina has been empty for so long. There are hollow places in her heart – in her; places where bright and beautiful things had been before her mother and the world had carved them out of her. Worse than those, though, are the spaces that are empty because of things Regina has done to herself. Those blank spaces ache inside her as if they remember the weapons that had wounded them, and that she had been the one to wield them.

There is a new hollowness inside of her now, but this pain is different. This pain is unbearable in a way that she can't put words to.

Regina has hated Snow White for most of the other woman's life. More than that, she has envied and coveted what the princess shares with her Prince Charming. Regina has spent years sneering at their love, and all the while known that same bond was what she had shared with Daniel. Regina had been cheated of that relationship. Mary Margaret and David have sacrificed everything for each other: other people, their kingdoms, their lives – everything. Regina has never been able to eradicate the part of her that has always wanted the same for herself; someone in the world who loves and cares about her enough to be willing to face such risks. How fulfilling it must be, she'd thought, to be so cherished.

Then Emma Swan had shoved a dagger into the darkness, and now Regina has forgotten how not to feel empty.

No one had ever told her that emptiness weighs so much.

Regina scuffs her hands together in the chill midnight air and stares up at her apple tree. The light from her back porch reaches just far enough to illuminate the curve of a still growing piece of fruit. Henry used to think it was strange that she could garner a sense of peace – no matter how fleeting – from staring at a tree. Even her apple tree is a reminder of Emma, now; Regina can still see where the other woman took a chain saw to one of the limbs. The piece has regrown since, and it looks different than the rest of the tree because it's small and new, but it's not out of place.

That's what Emma has done to Regina herself. The infuriating woman had appeared in Storybrooke and shoved passed Regina's walls: she had beat on them, and worn them away, and sidestepped them at every turn. Regina had been so busy trying to keep those walls up that she hadn't noticed how deep the cuts had gone: Emma has carved out some of the darkness that Regina has held on to throughout her life, and now new light shines through the fissures.

Emma Swan has taken a chain saw to the angry, vengeful heart of Regina; it's only now that the blonde is gone that the Mayor realizes that the new parts of herself shine because Emma has taught them how; because she has given them room and confidence to do so.

Emma hasn't given up on Regina, and Regina is not going to give up on her. She'll find a way to reverse what's happened – to bring Emma back to them – and then she'll throttle her for being so … so … _stupid_.

Regina is perceptive, and she has evaded life-threatening dangers by being sharp and quick on her feet. She knows, therefore, the moment that she is no longer alone in the darkness of her backyard. Regina knows who she wants it to be – who she hopes it is – but she's afraid to turn and find someone else.

"I've never known anyone like you," Emma whispers into the silence. Then, when Regina starts to turn she says quickly, "Don't."

She stops moving, but the command frightens her because she can't think of a reason why Emma wouldn't want her to look at her. In her anxiety, Regina's eyes scan the trunk of her tree and everything else she can make out in the dark, but nothing about her surroundings has changed. There is no hovering danger (except perhaps the one Emma herself presents).

"What do you mean, like me?" Regina prods.

She can feel Emma step closer. The air changes as the other woman moves closer and the grass whispers under her feet; Regina's heart triples its pace when Emma is close enough that she can almost feel the brush of the sheriff's chest against her back as she breathes.

"I despised you. When I first came to Storybrooke, and you did everything in your power to chase me away, and hurt me, and you refused to see that the harder you tried, the more I dug my heels in."

There is no breeze, and there hasn't been one all night, but Regina is certain that she feels her hair move. The air has become tar in her lungs; she can't breathe.

"Even then – even when I despised you, I think I wanted you to love me."

Regina's lungs unstick and she inhales sharply; her bones rattle as if she is being shaken apart.

"Henry loves me because his heart is pure, and because it's natural for children to love their parents. Mary Margaret and David, they love me, but they love almost everyone, and I'm their daughter. But you … I've always wondered what it's like to be loved by you, Regina. Your love has to be earned, and fought for, and I wanted to know what it was like to be loved by someone who would tear the world apart for me."

"Emma …"

Whatever else Regina was going to say is cut off by the gossamer feel of lips pressing into her neck, just above the base of her spine. Emma isn't even touching her, but her lips are on Regina's skin and they burn like a brand. A single touch, the barest hint of pressure, and Regina is reduced to _want_ , to _need_. She might have displayed that differently, once, but now she is unused to displaying her varying emotions as anything but anger and challenge; she spins on her bare heel and invisible bolts of lightning spark through her body when Emma doesn't move and their breasts brush.

"If you've come to frighten me, Miss Swan, you'll have to do better than that."

It's a lie and Emma knows it. Regina is frightened by the knowledge that something – someone – she has so resolutely told herself not to want has apparently been just shy of her grasp for so long; she's more frightened by the way that there is undiluted anguish in Emma's eyes. This is Emma, but not; this is the lost girl, perhaps, the homeless orphan who doesn't understand why she is unworthy of love.

"I'm sorry," Emma whispers. She doesn't explain what for.

"What the hell were you thinking, pulling a stunt like that?" Regina snaps. She feels raw and electrified, like a livewire, and Emma is so close.

"I had to do something." Emma finally takes a step back. Her mouth is turned down in displeasure. "I wasn't just going to stand by and let the darkness take you."

"Well why the hell not?"

Regina could have handled it. She's never been the Dark One, but next to Gold her heart is the most tainted – and it's not like anyone would have cared about what the darkness would do to her. Well, that's not true: Robin would have cared, probably, and he'd tried to save her. But Emma … Emma had cared enough to take her place. Emma had succeeded where Robin had failed, and what does that mean?

"Henry believes in you," Emma answers. It's a good answer, but it's not the one she wants to give.

"Everyone believes in you," Regina reminds her without heat.

"I know. And what's the use of the Savior, if it's not to save people?"

"Oh, so you saved me because it's, what? Your job? Well you can take that job and …"

"And what?" Emma hisses venomously.

She stalks toward Regina. This is Emma of four years ago, Regina thinks, this is the Emma that used to charge at her on the walk outside her front door, and the one who punches like she has cement hands, and the one who hacks away at trees with chainsaws. Regina is not to be easily intimidated – but she takes a subconscious step backward, and only realizes that it was more than one when her back smacks into the rough bark of the apple tree.

"Take that job and shove it?" Emma continues. She doesn't stop until she's dangerously, enticingly close. "In case you haven't noticed, I did. I threw that title right out the window. Carved that part out of myself with a pretty little dagger. Maybe you've seen it? Has my name on it and everything."

This is what Regina does to people: she hurts them, or draws them in and holds them close until they hurt themselves. She drives them away when all she really wants is to pull them closer. Emma Swan has saved her life, and who can save the Savior? Certainly not Regina; this is what it means to be loved by the woman who earned the title Evil Queen. Being loved by Regina means pain, and loss, and endless, ugly sacrifice.

"I never asked for this!" Regina surges forward; she has half a mind to punch Emma again, and half a mind to take her right now in the grass.

Emma is glowing in the inky blackness of night, and it takes Regina a moment longer than it should to realize that she's only doing so because there are waves of magic seeping from her skin. This isn't like Regina's fireballs, or the times where the two women have combined their magic to defeat a foe; this is unrestrained, untapped magic seeking an outlet.

"And yet, you have it. The least you can do is be happy about it."

"How can I be happy when you're intent on ruining my life?"

Emma is reaching for her and the air is practically crackling between them, and Regina knows this: they're either going to destroy or devour one another, and while she's prepared for the former every iota of her being is singing out for the latter.

Then the light in Regina's bedroom flips on. The yard below the window floods with pale yellow light and highlights Emma's face: it's her, the Emma that has sacrificed herself for Regina's happiness, and the darkness is there but it's like a distant echo. This is them, their frustration and misplaced anger, and Regina knows in that moment what will happen when they touch – what would have happened if they had been allowed to touch.

Instead, the light flips on and then there's a shadow – Robin's shadow – and Emma disappears.

Regina deflates instantly. Her skin crawls and itches as if her very cells are calling out for the touch they've just been denied, and when she sighs the sound is shaky. She is irritated that the moment was cut off, and grateful; if Emma had touched her right then Regina would not have stopped what would have happened next, and she owes both Emma and Robin more than that.

Shaking herself a little to quiet the rush of blood in her ears, Regina gathers herself and makes her way inside the house. Her exhilaration is so acute that it stings. The skin on the back of her neck where Emma pressed her lips into Regina's skin _aches_ with the absence of the blonde's touch.

All the way through the house and up the stairs, Emma's voice whispers in Regina's thoughts: _I wanted you to love me_.

Maybe Regina's love is pain; maybe it's sacrifice and turmoil and trial by fire; maybe it's everything that she's afraid it is, and it will hurt the ones she loves as much as heal them. But Emma was right about two things: Regina doesn't give her love to just anyone, and she would tear the world apart for those she does give it to.

Regina is about to show Emma Swan exactly what it's like to be loved by her, and maybe, when they're standing in the rubble and their lungs are full of ash, she'll have the courage to ask Emma if the destruction was worth it.


	2. Chapter 2

Regina thinks about moving into the Author’s house. She spends all of her free time there now; in the library pouring over books when she’s not down in her vault doing the same thing. The literature surrounding the Dark One is scarce and what she does find is vague and unhelpful. She keeps looking anyway.

Henry helps her, and Mary Margaret and David as well. In the moments that Regina stops to take in her surroundings, she finds it strange how normal this seems. They are the people who love Emma, and it is only natural that they should be the ones trying to find a way to undo what she has so selflessly done, but still … this would have been impossible four years ago.

Robin thinks her dismissal of him is a temporary thing brought on by guilt and stress. He has promised to leave her alone, and give her space, and insists that they will be together when this is over. He loves her, he says, and Regina knows that that is probably true, but it’s also pointless now.

Emma has unleashed her with words Regina hadn’t known she was waiting for, and now nothing will stop her from running headlong at the other woman.

One evening, Mary Margaret finds her alone in her vault in the middle of the night. Regina has books scattered around her in haphazard piles, some of which are still open to pages she has long since stopped reading. Regina glances up at the sound of footsteps and scowls in surprise.

“What are you doing here?”

The words come out sharper than she intends them to. Her eyes sting and there’s a stabbing pain between her shoulder blades, but Regina won’t give up. There has to be something here that will help her free Emma from the darkness. She will find it even if it means she doesn’t sleep for the next year.

Mary Margaret takes in the mess that Regina has made of her vault and then fixes her eyes on her. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“So you decided a trip to my vault in the middle of the night was a good use of your time?”

“I needed some air so I started walking, and I just … kept going. The door was open.”

Regina furrows her brow and turns her head to look in the direction of her vault door as if she can see it through the stone. Once – years ago, now – she would not have left that door open for anything; she would have raged and railed at anyone who dared step foot in her safe haven.

This is your fault, Regina thinks at an absent Emma.

Mary Margaret looks worn in the way that Regina feels. It’s pervasive, this lack that they share; it’s grim, and wearying, and Regina wants to ask if this is how Mary Margaret feels when David does something so altruistic for her. Regina wants to ask if this is what it was like when David told Mary Margaret to use his heart for the second curse. Did the other woman experience the same agony that Regina does now?

Regina knows that she did, because she remembers in near haunting detail the way Snow had begged her to take out her heart. She had been so convinced that her heart was strong enough for herself and Charming that she had commanded Regina to break it in half, and it had worked. Break it in half so that it might remain whole, Mary Margaret may as well have said. Regina sympathized then, but now … now she understands.

“Have you been out here all night?” Mary Margaret asks as she steps further into the space.

Regina sighs and sets aside the books in her lap. “I’ve been through all of these so many times I could rewrite them from memory.”

Mary Margaret seats herself on the lid of one of the trunks and tucks her hands between her knees. The crypt is warmer than the ambient temperature outside, but it’s still chilly. Winter is approaching quickly and no one wants to think about the impending arrival of the holiday season. No one wants to try to imagine celebrating anything while Emma is still … well, with things the way they are now.

“Have you seen her?”

Regina does her best not to stiffen. Has she seen Emma? Not since the night under the apple tree, when the sheriff had professed a desire to be loved by her; not since the night Regina had been given to understand that she could have what she’d wasted so much energy telling herself not to want.

“Not for a while,” Regina responds. She knows that Emma has been avoiding her since that night, and it irritates her, but she’d rather find a way to fix this than chase the other woman down.

She’s certainly not afraid of what might happen the next time she sees Emma. Regina is not afraid – but if she were, the fear would be that she might look at Emma and realize that the blonde doesn’t care about her love anymore.

If Regina is afraid, it’s only of what’s happening to Emma in the interim; it’s only a concern for what she might be trying to bear alone while the people who love her search uselessly for a way to help.

“Where do you think she goes when she’s not with us?” Mary Margaret is frightened, and the fear makes her voice quiet. “What do you think she does?”

Regina hears the part of the question that Mary Margaret doesn’t voice: do you think she’s killing people? And damn if Regina won’t take Emma any way she presents herself, in any eventuality (because she will), but she certainly hopes for Emma’s sake that she isn’t doing that.

“I don’t know,” Regina murmurs.

Emma is strong and so are her values – she has that bright, pure spirit that her parents went so far to ensure that she did – but this is an unprecedented challenge. Emma has a propensity for darkness and Regina knows that no one can ever truly be rid of that side of themselves; it will lurk and linger and be silent until, one day, it won’t. The brighter the light, the harsher the darkness; it doesn’t help that the only person worse than Emma at asking for help is Regina.

“What if we can’t do anything? What if this is just … how it’s going to be now? Gold lived as the Dark One for years.”

Gold lived as the Dark One for a lot longer than “years”, but Regina doesn’t mention that. She doesn’t respond, and she doesn’t let herself wonder what new shape their lives will take if Emma Swan is now both Savior and Dark One; she doesn’t contemplate for even a breath what such a powerful dichotomy will do to the soul who bears it.

Mary Margaret stays with her for another two hours. Regina is the one to make her leave. She gives up around two in the morning and ushers Mary Margaret out of the vault with that expression that used to be menacing, and now only manages to be stern. “Go home,” Regina tells Emma’s mother. “Go back to your husband and son.”

Regina does the same. She watches Henry sleep for a few minutes and then falls into her bed half dressed. She is too tired to realize that her pillow smells like someone else (it hasn’t smelled like Robin in weeks).

A mere handful of hours later she wakes from nightmares of blood in blonde hair and emotionless smiles.

Henry and Regina meet Mary Margaret, David, and baby Neal at Granny’s for lunch later that day. They do this often now (what will Emma think of this, Regina wonders as she sits across from her long time nemeses. Will Emma look at them, assembled as they are now, and know that she has made them a family?).

Emma has been the Dark One for six weeks and her loved ones are halfway through a meal when Hook makes a mistake that nearly claims his life.

There’s a startling boom outside that makes everyone in the diner jump. All eyes turn to look out the window, and the sight that waits for them is … terrible: it’s Emma in the middle of the street with a murderous look in her eye, and Hook with a silver dagger in his good hand.

Regina is running for the door with a crowd at her back. She catapults down the stairs and out into the street, and she’s yelling as she goes.

“What the hell are you doing?” she demands of Hook.

“How did you get that?” Henry yells as he stares at the dagger.

“He stole it,” Emma snarls.

“Is that true?” David challenges.

“Why?” Mary Margaret asks in disbelief.

Too many questions, Regina thinks, too many voices scratching in her ears; no one who has Emma’s best interests at heart would steal the Dark One’s dagger from Henry, who was given it to care for. No one would have taken that dagger from the house on Mifflin Street unless his or her aims were nefarious in some capacity.

“Give it back.” Henry approaches the pirate confidently, and his anger makes his expression sharp.

“Afraid I can’t do that, lad. I promise I’m doing this for Emma’s own good.”

Emma’s laugh is low, and dangerous, and ugly. “Controlling me is for my own good?” She takes a threatening step forward. “Give me the dagger.”

“I know that we can find him,” Hook argues. “The Apprentice said Merlin is the only one who can defeat the Dark One, and I know that you have enough power now to find him if you’d just listen to me.”

Regina has the sense that this isn’t the first time these two have had this debate, and that Emma has undoubtedly been steadfast in her denial to bow to Hook’s whim.

“Is that true, Emma?” Mary Margaret asks from her spot near the door to the diner. She’s clutching the baby to her chest. “Could you find the wizard?”

“Maybe,” Emma answers grudgingly. “But there’s no guarantee, and searching could take years.”

“But if you could – if he could get the darkness out of you -.”

“Searching would mean leaving Storybrooke.” Emma says it without inflection, and the lack of feeling is as much an explanation as the words are.

“And going where?” Regina makes sure the words are dripping with the disdain she feels.

“Our world,” Hook answers. “Don’t you understand? We could find Merlin and fix all of this.”

“And if you can’t? If you never find him?” David doesn’t seem fond of this plan either.

The question is answered by the ring of metal striking the asphalt; Regina angles her eyes down to the road in time to see a small bangle roll to a stop in front of Hook’s feet. She recognizes it immediately, because it should be on Zelena; it should be keeping her from using magic.

An all-new kind of panic seizes Regina then, because if that bracelet is here, then where is Zelena?

“Then you slap that bracelet on me and we stay stuck in the land of fairytales forever. Isn’t that your grand plan, Killian? Save me, or neutralize the threat of me?”

Regina’s thoughts spiral away from her: she imagines a Storybrooke without Emma in any incarnation; she thinks of all the holidays that Henry would spend without his other mother; she sees a flash of the heartache waiting for her knowing that a single kiss to the back of her neck is the only time she’ll ever feel Emma’s lips on her skin.

“Give me the dagger,” Emma says again, “or I’ll kill you.”

“Swan …”

“Give Henry the dagger,” Mary Margaret snaps.

Emma has been angry many times in her life, but not like this. She’s not just angry at Hook – who claims to love her, who says he wants the best for her – she truly wants to kill him. There is no horror in life like that of being controlled; of being trapped and wanting to fight like hell for freedom, but being denied the weapons to do so. Emma knows that the dagger controls her, but she hasn’t understood the magnitude of that until this moment.

She cannot let herself be controlled.

Hook is handing the dagger to Henry. Emma sees the exchange as though it’s happening in slow motion: the anger on her son’s face, the mild apology on Hook’s. How can anyone who loves her think it’s a good idea to control her? How can someone claim to want what’s best for her and then try to prove that by forcing her to do something against her will?

Emma snaps. She sees the pirate standing in the middle of the street and knows that they could be in another realm at this very moment if he’d only been a little smarter with his commands. “Take us home,” he’d said, and Emma had: she’d taken them to within a few feet of the people that were home to her, and reveled in the knowledge that home had been a place in Hook’s mind, and a group of people in hers. But if he hadn’t made that mistake … he would have taken her from her family.

Emma is livid and her hand is in the air before she’s given conscious thought to what she’s doing. She’s reaching for Hook’s chest; she’s going to rip his heart out.

Instead, Regina’s face and form pops into her line of sight. Hook has been pushed out of the way, but Emma doesn’t have time to contemplate that because her hand is suddenly in Regina’s chest. People are screaming – Emma’s name, and Regina’s, and variations thereof – and Emma can’t tear her eyes from the darker ones she’s now staring into.

“You’ll never forgive yourself if you kill him,” Regina says.

Emma sneers and her fingers close instinctively on empty-

Not empty. There should be emptiness in the cage of Emma’s fingertips, but there isn’t: her hand is curled around Regina’s heart. The beat is too quick, but it’s strong and pulses surely against Emma’s fingers. The shock of it shoves Emma right out of her rage.

“What the hell?” she breathes.

Emma knew that Regina’s heart was in her chest, didn’t she? She must, but she can’t bring forth the memory; she can’t recall a moment or a conversation, but there has to be one. Right? Then again, if there is, why is she so surprised to find Regina’s heart in its rightful place?

Since when is it stranger to find a heart in a body then out of it, anyway?

“Go on,” Regina encourages calmly. “All you have to do is pull.”

“What?” Emma is too stunned to say more. Her hand is still around the Mayor’s heart, and the other woman is … doing nothing about it.

“You want a heart?” Regina questions. “Take it. It’s yours.”

Emma’s airways close and the oxygen turns to lead in her chest. Her tongue has transformed into a length of cotton that saps all the moisture from her mouth; the heart in her hand – her hand that is still in Regina’s chest – pounds like thunder against Emma’s flesh.

_I wanted you to love me_.

_Take it. It’s yours._

Emma begins to tremble. Her fingers unclench from Regina’s heart and she pulls it from the other woman’s chest as if she’s been electrocuted. There’s no grace in the action and Regina lurches slightly; Emma stares at her hand as if it belongs to someone else.

She could have pulled Regina’s heart from her chest, and the crazy woman would have let her. Emma might have crushed it, or ripped it in half, or … hell, she could have done anything with it, and Regina knows it. Instead of putting up a fight, she’d told Emma to take it.

“Are you crazy?” The adrenaline bites as it flushes through her body, and Emma begins to pant. “You just … you were just … gonna let me take it? What if I had …”

Emma bends forward and braces her hands on her knees. Mary Margaret might be crying somewhere in the distance, and she might have killed Regina sixty seconds ago, and Emma is going to vomit.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Emma warns. She glances up at Regina through her hair. “Do you hear me, Regina?”

“Mom?”

Emma’s face crumples as she turns her gaze on Henry. Henry, who must know that she wanted to rip Hook’s heart out; Henry, who has just seen the mother he has always believed in with her hand in his other mother’s chest. Her son has just witnessed everything, and she wants to die under the weight of her shame.

She stumbles forward and grabs the magic binding bracelet so that she can toss it to Regina.

“Zelena’s knocked out,” she tells the Mayor. “I didn’t hurt her.”

Emma disappears despite David calling her name, and Henry’s beseeching look.

Regina’s words are an endless litany in her mind: _you want a heart? Take it. It’s yours._


End file.
